


Microcosmos

by MafagafoGirl



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Foster Parents, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, LOTS OF ANGST IM SORRY, Stabdad AU, antivaxxers show up, basically theres not enough of slickpaint or stabdad, i love these three dorks they're Very Good, so why not join them together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 14:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19907314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MafagafoGirl/pseuds/MafagafoGirl
Summary: Sometimes, the tiniest spark of life needs to be heard. It has its own world, its own memories. Nobody does hear them though.Not until it blows up.





	Microcosmos

**Author's Note:**

> this is what i do when i was supposed to be either doing work for uni or working on my other projects  
> *writes angst* *writes angst* *writes angst* *writes angst* *writes angst*

A tiny speckle of life. Miserable. Insignificant. That’s how Karkat felt like, for the past few months. Losing his dad, getting put into the foster system, being sent to strangers like his opinion didn’t matter. Nothing he did mattered. He was thirteen, and to the eyes of the State and the System, he had no voice.

It was fucking weird, really, being put into someone else’s house and be expected to live with them like your past life didn’t even matter. What, do they think they can just erase someone’s memory like a shitty alien villain in a 50’s indie horror movie? Memory erased or not, there he was with his newfound “family”. Or at least the two people State-assigned to him by the foster system.

They were old fashioned, as old fashioned as they came, even though they weren’t old. Looked like they were ripped straight out of an old sitcom. He left early for his shady work, came back at six, she stayed home doing whatever old timey housewives did. It felt sort of comforting, actually. A picture of the ideal nuclear family, except Karkat didn’t want anything to do with it. It could never be his family, because his was long gone, and he’d rather be alone than be with people that were complete strangers to him up to two weeks ago.

Alright, credit where it’s due, he didn’t have a lot of trouble calling ‘Mrs. Paint’ “mom”. She was nice to him, she let him stay up late and wake up late on weekends, and gave him snacks during the afternoon while he did his homework or played videogames with friends, but then again she was nice to everybody. Karkat wasn’t special, he was just a boy she took care of. Her husband, though, had a lot of names. For his friends, who showed up eventually to drag him out of the house or to play poker, he was ‘Slick’; his wife, she’d lightly call him ‘Jack’ under her breath whenever he needed to be calmed or warned. The teenager couldn’t call him anything more than ‘a thorn on my side constantly stabbing me like one of these fucking martyr spike collars or some shit, except I’m not martirizing myself and he’s actually just a huge asshole’. 

Yep, dinnertime wasn’t fun.

What sparked some change in that was not dinner, actually, but a sunday morning breakfast. Slick didn’t like waking up early on weekends, and neither did Karkat, but for some reason the three of them were there, pretending to enjoy breakfast as if morning grumpiness weren’t a thing. The sunrays reflected onto Karkat’s phone screen and made it impossible for him to read what his friends were talking in the group chat, and he changed his position on his chair, sitting sideways and curved so his body could shield the screen from the powerful, warm light that chastised his back instead.

From the corner of his eye, Karkat spotted Slick scowling at him. That’s what he’d do before starting a ruckus; scowl and stare, as if his dagger glare were enough to discipline the teenager to do what he wanted. Granted, had Karkat been younger, or less crabby, it would’ve worked wonders. Slick’s glare-daggers were sharper than an actual knife. But Karkat wouldn’t let him win, specially not at nine in the morning after miserable five hours of sleep.

“The fuck d’you think you’re doing?” Slick’s tongue wasn’t as sharp, but it was definitely heavy.

“Nunya.”

“...’scuse me?”

“Nun’ya business.”

“Do I have to remind you,” he spoke slowly, but his fists were already dangerously clenched, resting on the table’s surface, “that you’re in my fuckin’ house?”

“Do I have to remind you that you’re a pain in my ass and to leave me alone?!”

“Karkat!” Slick stood up, but Paint held his arm rather strongly, hoping it would keep him at bay.

“Please, Jack.” That’s all she had to say. He was already sitting back with a grumble of discontent. She was the only one that could tame him that quick and that easy. Karkat had seen him throw fits over newspaper news (they even signed up for physical newspapers, who the fuck does that in this day and age?), and only her plea would stop him from ripping a hole in the couch with his pocket knife. Karkat had no idea what he could do if Paint wasn’t around to hold his reins.

Her efforts were now directed at the teenager, and while she didn’t have the same power as she did with Slick, Karkat wouldn’t want to be shitty to her, because she didn’t deserve it. She was the nicest person in the world. 

Unfortunately, today he was three hours short on sleep.

“Now, Karkat, would you please sit str-”

“Fuck no.”

And that was the nail on his coffin, the last straw that killed the turtle, the drop that overflowed the dam. Slick kicked back his chair, standing up quicker and more furious than he’s ever been; nobody shits on his wife.  _ Nobody _ .

“That’s it, I’m gonna--” He stepped around the table, towards Karkat. The teenager stood up as well, ready to receive whatever hell he wanted to throw and fight back. The strife was only interrupted by Paint firmly putting herself between them, grabbing their arms with the fierceness of a school principal about to suspend two brats.

“No! I’m tired of this!” She started, walking towards the hallway, taking them with her; they followed without saying much, despite Karkat letting out a note of surprise and Slick, a confused growl. “how do you expect to live well in this house if you can’t be civil towards each other! I tried everything I could, so I am very sorry I have to do this to you now.”

Mrs. Paint finally dropped them in the master bedroom, making sure to stand between them and the door, taking the key from the dressing table’s drawer and holding it tightly. 

“You’ll stay there until you make peace, or either of you rips the other one’s head out. I’m sorry. Talk it out, make it work. Please.”

“Fuck no.” Was Slick’s response, as it almost always defaulted to when he wasn’t processing the situation and wanted to give it a quick end. His wife put her hands together next to her heart and tilted her head, in a clear distressed expression that was obviously trying to pluck Slick’s heartstrings.

Hell, she played them like a fiddle.

“Fine.”

As Paint locked the room and her footsteps vanished on the corridor, Karkat sat on the bed, pulling his legs up and getting ready to melt down into the soft mattress, and didn’t intend to stand up any sooner, ogling Slick with anger. His foster parent turned back to him and shook his head and threw his arms lightly, in an inquire.

“What now?”

“This is your fault.”

“What’d I do? For all I know you’re the one that’s fuckin’--fuckin’ glued to that thing.” He pointed to Karkat’s cellphone, safely secured in the boy’s hands, and was met with a loud groan and an eye roll.

“It’s always that, isn’t it?”

“The only thing you had to do is eat breakfast with your family, is that so hard t-” Slick gestured broadly before being interrupted by a coarse and overly defensive voice.

“You’re not my fucking family! You don’t care about me, you’re just in it for the money!”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and once I had to talk my friend out of swallowing a bomb at three in the morning! Why the fuck do you think that?”

“I know mo--I know Paint cares about me. She cares about everyone. But you must be a special kind of moron to look at you and not know that you don’t--”

“How?”

“--look at the way you treat me! It’s always ‘Karkat, fuck off’, ‘shut up’, ‘stop that’, every single day!”

“It’s because you’re a bratty piece of shit!” Slick stepped forwards, throwing his arms up once again and raising his voice to its full screaming potential. He used his arms to talk a lot and it could be intimidating, but right now, it felt hurtful. “Is that what you want me to say?! I tell you to shut up because you’re always complaining about shit, I tell you to stop because you act like a huge asshole! Is this what you want to hear?!”

Karkat was silent. Deep down, that was what he expected, so he wasn’t entirely incredule. But hearing it out loud, being it true or not, hurt more than he wished to admit to himself. Of course he thought the teen was an ass, he thought anyone that didn’t follow his orders like a trained dog was an asshole; Karkat was one of these people that you had to earn your respect. He turned away, laid down on the bed, facing the other side of the bedroom, and didn’t say a thing.

“Fine then, y--you don’t wanna talk, we ain’t gonna talk.” Slick lashed finally, sitting on the dressing table’s stool, also turning his back to the teen. Frustrated and taciturn, he drummed his fingers on the table, unable to think of something to get out of that situation. Every time he glanced back at Karkat, the boy was just in his phone typing away long essays with a pouty angry face. To be honest, he needed a nap so fucking bad.

Karkat wasn’t sure of when he fell asleep, but he did notice he left a reply halfway typed when he woke up, and his phone’s battery was nearly dead. Great. On top of that, his stomach was growling, since he had taken just one half of his breakfast, it was close to lunch time now, and he was unable to get out of Slick and Paint’s bedroom until he and Slick were buddy-buddy with each other, which he pretty much didn’t think would happen ever. What a nice way to die. 

Slick was asleep still sitting at the dressing table, forehead planted on his crossed arms sprawled across the surface. If the teen caught anything up on these first few weeks of co-living, is that the man was a very light sleeper, woke up sharp and alert, and maybe after a two-hour power nap he would be easier to reason with.

“Hey.” Karkat called, and as soon as the -y left his mouth, his foster parent was lifting up his head and twisting around on his seat to look at him.

“What.”

“...’m hungry.”

Silence.

“And?”

Silence, but a bit more confused this time. Slick sighed, standing up, and faced the locked door, with one hand resting on it and the other on his waist, raising his voice to speak to the other side.

“Paint, doll, we’re gettin’ hungry.”

There wasn’t much of an answer.

“I don’t think she heard you.”

“She did.”

“How can you know?”

Slick gave him a ‘I fucking know what I’m doing’ scowl, and Karkat replied with a ‘don’t fucking look at me that way’ squint. Each sat on each vertical end of the bed, they refused to look at each other, let alone argue about anything. A handful of minutes passed, and the sound of the door’s mechanism being unlocked made both of them perk up, just to see Paint’s gentle hand slide in a plate with a sandwich onto the dressing table, and lock it again.

It was very well stuffed, with multiple layers of some sort of meat, almost melty cheese, lettuce and homemade mayonnaise, but still, just one sandwich, cut in half. Karkat knew what she was doing very well. She wanted them to share it, and whether or not they actually did it, half of the teen wanted to be as asinine as possible about it, and the other half just wanted to get this over with and share the thing already. It’s no big deal.

Slick brought the plate to him and waited for him to take his half. He hesitated, but took it fairly quickly, and was surprised when, instead of taking the other half for himself, his foster parent put the plate next to him, on the nightstand, and stepped back to fumble with his overcoat’s pockets, hanging on the back of the door.

“You’re not gonna eat your half?” Karkat asked, while Slick retrieved a tiny brown package and ripped it open, counting the licorice candy inside on his palm, as someone that counts their change after leaving the store; they were hardened for the time they spent sitting in that pocket, but Slick didn’t seem to care. He lifted his head at Karkat’s inquire, and shrugged.

“I ain’t hungry, kid.” The tone was when an adult tells a lie so a child doesn’t worry. Karkat fucking hated that. He finished his sentence by crunching down three or four of the black scottie dogs all at once, getting his daily fix of pure sugar. A second thing that the teen learned during his time at that house echoed on the back of his mind.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be eating that.”

“I’m already pre-diabetic, what difference does it make?” Slick lashed back between his crunching, throwing back the packet and getting the rest of the licorice inside his mouth, “mind yer own business.”

Karkat scoffed, “I guess we’re not getting out of here that soon. Listen, maybe we could just... Mind our businesses and then just say that we worked it out and maybe just, like... Chill.”

“Now I like myself a bit of lying to get out of doing your work as much as anyone else, and I gotta say,” Slick lifted his hand, making a tiny pincher with his thumb and index fingers, “I’m this bit proud of you for suggesting that, but I ain’t gonna lie to my wife. We’re gonna have to talk it out, at some point, I guess.”

They didn’t, though, for at least a few minutes. Slick paced around the room, restless, going back and forth around the bed, entering the bathroom once and then standing up next to the bed, defeated. Karkat said his last goodbyes to his friends over the last three percent of his battery, before the screen went dark. Now they had no other choice, and they still chose to be silent. The atmosphere was heavy not with animosity, but a deep awkwardness, as either of them wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start.

Finally, Slick rubbed the back of his neck, sat down at the foot of the bed, and started already.

“I’m sorry. ‘bout the way I talk to you, kid. I don’t--” The man crossed his arms and stretched his legs in front of him, keeping his heels on the ground, “--I don’t know how to deal with your kind. With teens. Haven’t got much experience past the... The toddler part.”

Up to the last few words, Karkat was ready to spit out some venom-filled sarcastic note, but stopped himself.

“What do you mean?”

The answer took a few minutes to come out. Slick wasn’t good at exposition, and he wasn’t good at expressing his feelings. He couldn’t look his foster child in the eye.

“Me and Paint, we had a kid, a couple of years ago. He had a bunch of allergies, he was allergic to egg, fucking weirdest thing I’ve ever seen... Though, that meant he couldn’t get his shots, right, ‘cuz they got egg in ‘em. Well turns out some other mom in the daycare thought her kid didn’t need shots either. That they didn’t matter. They ended up giving our boy the measles and uh... He, uh...”

Pause. Karkat watched with intense eyes.

“...Didn’t live to see his second birthday.”

...

...

“Sorry.”

It was shallow. It felt shallow as Karkat spoke it, and he hated himself for it. Slick shrugged, as if that didn’t matter, and pulled one of his legs below him, to turn around to face the teen on the bed.

“Your dad died of cancer, right?”

“More or less.” He fiddled with his phone’s case, “when we found out he didn’t wanna do the treatment, because --d’you know what cancer treatment actually is?”

Slick hummed, so Karkat could proceed.

“It’s like... They pump your body full of chemicals and hope they kill the cancer before they kill you. If it doesn’t sound fun now, it wasn’t fun when he couldn’t get up from bed in pain. He didn’t wanna do it, but he did it anyway. And in the end it wasn’t even the poison, or the cancer that killed him.”

“What was it?”

“The flu. Chemicals made him too weak to fight it.”

“Well, I’m sorry for your loss. Guess we’re both missin’ something.” Slick was ready to move on from that, but Karkat wasn’t.

“I asked him not to do it. I wanted to remember him like when he was healthy, not like he was all sick, and he didn’t listen to me. He didn’t listen and then he died and they didn’t let me see him and they didn’t ask me what I wanted! They didn’t ask me where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do! They didn’t ask me because they don’t care about me. Nobody does.”

“ ‘ey, that’s not true.”

“How can you know?”

...

...

“Slick, can I tell you something?”

“Okay.”

“You’re not gonna freak out?”

“...Why would--w-would I have any reason to?”

“Okay.” Karkat took a deep breath. “I did it.”

“What.”

“My dad told me that if I kept acting up the stress would make him get cancer and I didn’t listen to him, because that’s bullshit. And then he got it. And none of this would’ve happened if I weren’t shitty. It’s my fault. I gave him cancer.”

Slick glanced down at the floor. That train of thought was familiar to him.

“Karkat, how old were you? When you found out?”

“Ten.”

“You were ten, how the fuck would you even do anything?! When I was ten I couldn’t reach the bottom shelf in mama’s kitchen to steal cookies off the jar, and -- no offense -- judging by your size now I don’t think you could either. This is making no sense -- what I mean is... Karkat, you think you’re the size of an ant carrying a burden that’s a hundred times your size. And the thing is... What took me and Paint a long time to realize, is that it’s not yours. It wasn’t negligence, or lack of will, or what have you, y’know. And different from an ant, you can’t carry it. You’re only gonna hurt your back.”

...

“Karkat, what d’you want?”

The boy didn’t answer, and instead glanced away from his foster parent, focusing the wall behind him. What he wanted wasn’t worth being said, because it was stupid, and childish, because it could never be true. He wanted his old life back. He wanted his dad.

Emotionally drained, Slick fell backwards onto the width of the bed, letting out an exasperated sigh. They absorbed each other’s company like that, for what felt like half an hour, or maybe more, and somehow their emotional distress seemed to complement and comfort one another. They were understood a little bit better, and while it wouldn’t fix anything immediately, it was a good first step.

Karkat poked Slick’s thigh with his toe.

“Hey. I think we can leave now.”

“Yeah, same.”

**Author's Note:**

> basically this can be summed up in  
> Slick- CUZ YOU BE ON THAT PHONE  
> and  
> Karkat - everyone says 'what the fuck karkat' but nobody says 'HOW the fuck is karkat'
> 
> Let me know if you guys like this! I have something kind of thought up for a second part but only if you want to see more of this. I appreciate feedback ^^  
> My tumblr is artiesbutt. Feel free to scream at me anytime.


End file.
